DAVID MURDOCK COLUMN: On crossword puzzles (and clues within the clues)
One of my great pleasures is working crossword puzzles. It’s one of the “sharpening the pencils” things I do. By that, I mean that it’s one of those things I do in the first hour of most days to clear away the fog of sleep before I get to work. First coffee, then crossword.
I’ve even become a little superstitious about it. I skim through the clues — Across, then Down — until I find one that I’m sure of to start. A good day is when I’m sure on “No. 1 Across.”
Over the years, I’ve noticed some things about crossword puzzles. Most important of all, solving one requires no special knowledge, but it does require “speaking” in “crosswordese.” There are certain clues within the clues, based on how they’re worded. If the clue contains an abbreviation, for example, the answer has one, too. And there are certain areas of knowledge that are important for crossword aficionados, like geography.
By the way, all the examples I use here are real ones “captured in the wild” from the last several weeks of The Gadsden Times’ crosswords.
One example that illustrates both of the above claims is this one: three letters, the clue is “Mont. neighbor” — the solution is WYO. It could have been IDA, too, but the second letter was “Y.” North and South Dakota are usually “crossword abbreviated” as either two or four letters, so it wasn’t going to be either of them.
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Now, that was a clue early in the week. Usually, the puzzles get more difficult as the week progresses. Leaving out the much larger Sunday crossword, usually the most difficult one any given week is the Saturday puzzle. So, a recent late week clue on geography was (5 letters) “Seattle’s Sound” — the answer is PUGET. That requires a bit more geographic knowledge, but there was also a clue within the clue — the “S” in “Sound” was capitalized, so it reminded me of Puget Sound, the body of water on which Seattle is situated.
Some geographic clues are repeated week after week. Four letters for some variation on the clue “Iowa town” is always AMES. Others are rarer, but still show up every once in a while, like (3 letters) “Gary’s state.” The first time I saw that one, I thought, “Who’s Gary?” Then, it hit me: Gary, IND! I’ve spotted that one quite a few times. Some appear to be unique, like (4 letters) “Nobel Prize City” — OSLO. That one, I’ve seen once.
Another area of knowledge needed to zip through a puzzle is a smattering of foreign languages. No need for fluency, but it helps to know a word or two. The clues are fun. It’s never something straightforward, like (4 letters) “She in Spanish.” It’s “She in Seville” — ELLA. It’s never like (4 letters) “Yes, in French.” It’s something like “Yes, to Pierre” — OUI.
Those are early in the week clues. The more challenging ones later in the week are when it combines clues, something like (3 letters) “Ja, to Jacques” — OUI. Or those in Latin, like (4 letters) “Livy’s bear” — URSA. Or, one of my recent favorites, (3 letters) “Weeks per annum.” That one stumped me until I realized it wanted the number of weeks per year, and that clue within a clue indicated that it must be in Roman numerals — LII. Those were fun ones.
There are some answers that show up so often that they find different ways to “clue” them. Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, was named for Elihu Yale, who had given a large donation, so a nickname for a Yale student is “Eli.” “ELI” is a quite common crossword answer to a variety of clues, like “New Haven student.”
Another one like that is “UKES,” as in “ukuleles.” In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen that one clued as “Small music makers” and “Banjo kin.” Another common answer is “ELIA.” The English essayist Charles Lamb published under the name of “Elia,” so it’s something of a challenge to clue that one in a way other than “Charles Lamb,” but occasionally the clue is “Lamb alias.” That one has appeared at least three times in the last month.
The clues I really love, though, are the tough ones late in the week, the ones where the puzzle designer plays. A few weeks ago, one such clue was (6 letters) “Urbana 11,” and Urbana is the home of the University of Illinois Fighting ILLINI. Another recent clue was (5 letters) “Fake drake.” A drake is a male duck, and I already had the “D,” so DECOY.
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My favorite one lately stumped me at first, though. The clue was simple: (5 letters) “Lettuce.” I only had one letter figured out — the next-to-last one was “L.” Trying all my tricks, nothing came to me. Then, out of the blue … MOOLA, as in cash. Some random memory of a character in a detective novel calling cash “lettuce” just came back to mind.
I suppose we all choose hobbies to fit our personalities, and crosswords delight me because I like to play with words. And I really like to see expert crossword puzzle designers do the same.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock discusses his love for crosswords
